Any One of Them Could've Been Murdock
by Lucillia
Summary: Had things played out slightly differently, any one of the team could have ended up in Murdock's place.
1. Watching the Walls Melt

B.A. had always been a strong person, but as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. The final straw in his case had been being awake as he was being loaded onto the plane to Fort Bragg. War was hell, and it could break anybody.

He might have been fixed afterward if he hadn't been stuck where he was with the doctors and nurses who were all convinced he was ill, and had contradicting ideas as to what would heal him after his final mission in Vietnam had gone so horribly wrong.

Every week, there was a new treatment, but that was all there was about this place that was new. He probably would have lost all sense of time and reality in this place where they constantly fed him pills that made him fuzzy, twitchy, or a million other things if it weren't for his friends. His friends would always come and break him out when they needed his mechanical expertise for a job, and he was always happy to help. The alternative was being surrounded by too white walls and fed pills to the point where the walls became wavy, shimmered, and started to look like they were melting.

The best part about having his friends around was that they put up with his quirks, curbed his violent behavior when necessary, and put up with the fact that he was so scared of flying that the thought of being on an airplane practically paralyzed him. To his friends, he wasn't an interesting case that could be cured one day if only the right treatment could be found. He wasn't a guinea pig to be fed a wide variety of drugs in order to see if they would stabilize his mood and get rid of his violent tendencies. He wasn't a patient.

To his team, he was just B.A., and he was happy just being B.A..


	2. A Boy and His Masks

Templeton Peck, who was known to his friends and some of his enemies as "Face" could make just about anyone buy anything. So, when he started selling insanity in order to get out of prison time after he was arrested when his last mission in Vietnam went horribly wrong, everyone bought it. Unfortunately, they bought it a little too well, and instead of strolling out of the hospital "fully cured" after six months or so, he was still hanging around ten years later while the doctors tried to figure out which one of the personalities he'd shown them early on was really his.

He probably truly would have gone insane if it weren't for his friends. His friends who needed him for his ability to con just about everybody into giving him just about anything his heart desired. When he was with his team, he could be just about anyone and everyone. All he had to do was create a convincing enough mask. The masks he put on and pulled off at will made him everything but the orphan who grew up to live in a mental hospital despite the fact that he was perfectly sane.

All wasn't roses when he was away from the hospital though. As he ran missions with the team, there was a little voice in the back of his mind that quietly wondered if the mask of perfect health he wore around his friends was just that, a mask.


	3. Stir Crazy

Someone had to stay behind to ensure the others got out safe. It had been Hannibal's bad luck that he had drawn the short straw instead of Murdock. While the team, including Murdock who had been left severely rattled by the war and was only half sane at this point, made their way to Los Angeles, Hannibal's defense attorney came up with the only defense he could think of to get him off.

The thing was, considering the Colonel's somewhat erratic and often manic behavior, the defense was quite plausible.

While the rest of the team ran from the law, using the plan they'd been given before they broke out, Colonel Smith was being sent to a little white room in the VA. A room in which he stayed for the most part for the next ten years, as the team's man on the inside, the team's secret weapon who could get away because he wasn't wanted by the law. And, if he was caught, the military would just return him to the hospital rather than send him to prison, and therefore he could be sprung again and again as necessary.

Had it not been for the team who came to him for plans amongst other things such as his ability to disguise himself and blend in just about anywhere, he would have most likely gone completely stir crazy and done something stupid, something stupid that would have most likely gotten him killed. As it was, on the days he was forced to stay in the hospital, he spent almost the entire time he wasn't being forced to speak with the psychiatrists pacing. When he could cheek the meds that made him fuzzy as if there was a wool blanket wrapped around his brain that was.


	4. Did Someone Call For The ATeam?

In 1972 a group of soldiers were arrested for a crime they claimed they committed under orders. Further investigation revealed that there was absolutely no record of a General Morrison...

"Mr. Smith, you have a phone call." a nurse who walked into the day room said.

Former Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith who was chewing on the end of a rolled up piece of paper because they didn't allow him to smoke cigars at the VA got up from the card game he had been playing with the other members of his unit. Ten minutes later, Smith returned.

"It's time to break out of here boys, someone called for the A-Team." Smith said.

"It's about time." Face said as he laid his cards on the table and moved for the pile of IOU slips in the middle only to have B.A. slam his hand down on the table and scoop them up himself.

"Let me go get Billy." Murdock said.

"If that dog of yours pees in my van again, I'm going to kill it, and then I'm going to kill you." B.A. said to the retreating Murdock.

An hour later, the A-Team was making tracks down the highway in one of the VA vans. When Lynch got the call, he swore profusely. Over the last ten years, his career had become a joke because of the A-Team.

Why, you ask?

Because over the last ten years, it had been his task to round up the bunch of loonies every time they took on one of their insane crusades, and herd them back to the mental hospital.


End file.
